Emma Freeman's travel blog about cruises

Sea Day 2 of 6

Theatre. Second-hand review of last night’s show, Cry of the Celts. It was quite good until the girl did Danny Boy. “She didn’t just murder it, she annihilated it, chopped it up into little pieces and threw it away”. It was apparently sung by a girl, which seems unusual, and I can find no one with a polite word to say about it. I’ll keep asking around, but don’t hold your breath.

Sunshine. Am once again lying on a sunlounger trying not to doze off and listening to the sounds of the ship. The murmur of conversations in the shade and between loungers, the slosh of the water in the pool lapping gently back and forth, and the triumphant yells of the rather over-competitive table tennis players in the far corner. Yes, the sun is shining and life on Arcadia is returning to normal. I’m only doing one hour on each side today – start slowly. I don’t want to burn, but I don’t want to arrive home paler than I left, either! After the exhausting sprint of Alaska – 8 places in 9 days – this is the Wind Down. Everyone is lying in the sun or the shade, reading and generally uncoiling, swapping stories and reminiscing and catching up with diaries, postcards and emails. For the record, I have bought some postcards, I just haven’t written or sent them. Small technicality.

Shoulder pain. I have a massage tomorrow. I have booked it with the masseuse who has physiotherapy training as well, in the hope that she won’t do my shoulder more harm than good. The proof will be in the pudding, so to speak. Watch this space. In the meantime, the sling is getting me WAY more sympathy than I deserve!

Racism. Not something you’d expect to find on a P&O cruise ship. But there you go. And certainly not this flagrant. Today one of our tablemates described the head waiter who takes care of us and our advance orders as “Sammy Davis Jnr’s brother”. Twice. Later, when the wine waiter arrived, he called him “Sambo” to his face, which really shocked the Canadians at our table. Everyone laughed it off, but it made us all uncomfortable.

You have to be REALLY racist to think that a Goan of Indian descent looks like Sammy Davis Jnr., who was African-American of Jewish descent, remember. You’d have to be a racist of the “they all look the same” ilk. And that “they” would have to include pretty much everyone on the planet with skin that isn’t Scottish white. Never mind that the waiter concerned is nearly six foot tall and Sammy Davis Jnr was five foot.

I’m rather going off this tablemate, frankly. I don’t know what we can do about it – I think we could be stuck with them – but it’s not good, that’s for sure. If he says anything similar tomorrow, we may have to do something about it, but maybe he’ll reel it in a bit after his wife has a go at him later. For what it’s worth, the complaint about the invitations not being on good enough paper? Same bloke. It’s not all smooth sailing* on a cruise, you know.